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49ers Guard Aaron Banks Expected to Land Extremely Lucrative Contract

Expect the 49ers to draft a guard no later than Round 3 this year.
Grant Cohn|
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Aaron Banks (center) blocks against Arizona Cardinals defensive tackle Bilal Nichols (left) during the second quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers guard Aaron Banks (center) blocks against Arizona Cardinals defensive tackle Bilal Nichols (left) during the second quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images | Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers almost certainly will need a new starting left guard this offseason.

The incumbent starter, Aaron Banks, will be a free agent in a few days and is expected to receive an incredibly lucrative contract extension according to The NFL Network's Tom Pelissero.

"After the Chiefs placed the franchise tag on Trey Smith, Banks became one of the top guards -- if not the position's headliner -- on the free-agent market," writes Pelissero.

"A second-round pick (No. 48 overall) out of Notre Dame in 2021, Banks allowed just one sack on 471 pass-blocking snaps last season, according to Pro Football Focus' charting, while posting a career-high 67.2 PFF grade in 13 starts for the 49ers.

"Last March, the Panthers signed free-agent guard Robert Hunt to a whopping five-year, $100 million deal. If the market is right, Banks could land a contract in a similar range of $18 million to $20 million per season."

That's an insane amount of money for a guard who isn't particularly good.

No offense to Banks, but a 67.2 PFF grade is pretty average. And he never has been to a Pro Bowl despite playing for a high-profile team. Maybe he'll be a better fit on a team that runs more gap scheme runs and less outside zone, but I can't imagine a world in which he lives up to the contract he's going to get.

Which is why it's so important to draft offensive linemen. Even average ones are outrageously expensive on the free agent market, and good ones almost never make it to free agency in the first place because they're too hard to replace.

Expect the 49ers to draft a guard no later than Round 3 this year.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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